I always thought that was the biggest pile of bullcrap going.
Helped one sector of industry while loads of others were totally ignored.
I always thought that was the biggest pile of bullcrap going.
Surely the disease of covid was at least a contributory factor in the deaths?Silkyskills1 wrote: ↑Mon Dec 11, 2023 6:52 pmI understand and accept we might clash politically but we all know who was/ were responsible for the catastrophe of 2020/2021. A slight error by a KC in no way equates to the sheer, callous incompetence of those who have blood on their hands of hundreds of thousands of people in this country. Indefensible and you know it.
Hancock didn’t award any contractsMrTopTier wrote: ↑Mon Dec 11, 2023 5:15 pmHow about we start with those at the top.
We had a lying Prime Minister in Johnson.
We have listened to the current unelected PM today lying about how he changed phones and all his WhatsApp’s disappeared.
Michelle Mone and the PPE still not prosecuted.
The contracts award to Conservative donors by friendly MP’s
Matt Hancock
Dealing with those at the top will make dealing those further down the food chain easier to deal with.
We know that’s not how it works though, nobody above will be touched, the enquiry will be published in a few years time. Lessons will be learnt.
People will offer their sanctimonious apologies and we all move on.
Matt Hancock's pub landlord was awarded a £40m Covid-related contract. Must be a coincidence.GodIsADeeJay81 wrote: ↑Mon Dec 11, 2023 7:57 pmHancock didn’t award any contracts
That was done by a department of which he had no control
I think you're right there TBH.summitclaret wrote: ↑Mon Dec 11, 2023 4:31 pmI would suggest that there is as much chance of getting to the truth here as there is anywhere else in the world.
He didn’t award it though, that’s my pointClovius Boofus wrote: ↑Mon Dec 11, 2023 8:02 pmMatt Hancock's pub landlord was awarded a £40m Covid-related contract. Must be a coincidence.
Then you'd get some pretty useless results.Paul Waine wrote: ↑Mon Dec 11, 2023 6:18 pmI'm hesitant to suggest that the UK needs an inquiry in why we spend so long over inquiries. If I had the chance to set the terms of reference for an inquiry the first item would be the inquiry must be completed within 6 months - and no payments for any of the lawyers involved in the inquiry unless it was completed in 6 months - and was judged to be a meaningful and useful inquiry.
Hancock isn't a turkey, he's a scapegoat.GodIsADeeJay81 wrote: ↑Mon Dec 11, 2023 9:04 pmHe didn’t award it though, that’s my point
Yes he put people forward for it, but he didn’t sign anything off
Let’s not forget, it was desperate times, we needed PPE.
The French had kept our order for themselves
The stuff from Turkey wasn’t up to scratch
Both of those were orders via official channels
But sure, let’s just focus on a man who didn’t authorise anything
If all that is the case, you have to then wonder why, legitimate existing and cheaper suppliers were side lined in favour Tory connected companies with often little history of PPE supply?GodIsADeeJay81 wrote: ↑Mon Dec 11, 2023 9:04 pmHe didn’t award it though, that’s my point
Yes he put people forward for it, but he didn’t sign anything off
Let’s not forget, it was desperate times, we needed PPE.
The French had kept our order for themselves
The stuff from Turkey wasn’t up to scratch
Both of those were orders via official channels
But sure, let’s just focus on a man who didn’t authorise anything
Desperate enough to give Hancock's pub landlord a multimillion-pound contract. But like you say, nothing to see here .GodIsADeeJay81 wrote: ↑Mon Dec 11, 2023 9:04 pm
Let’s not forget, it was desperate times, we needed PPE.
Lest we forget...GodIsADeeJay81 wrote: ↑Mon Dec 11, 2023 9:04 pmHe didn’t award it though, that’s my point
Yes he put people forward for it, but he didn’t sign anything off
Let’s not forget, it was desperate times, we needed PPE.
The French had kept our order for themselves
The stuff from Turkey wasn’t up to scratch
Both of those were orders via official channels
But sure, let’s just focus on a man who didn’t authorise anything
If it is proved that the Cabinet sourced all the PPE themselves and the civil servants were not involved, then it will be a scandal. If it is proved that the civil servants were involved but avoided certain suppliers because the minister told them to, it will be a scandal. But if it turns out that the civil service were the ones procuring the PPE but were unable to do it efficiently, then it will still be a scandal, but a different sort of scandal.
Agree totally that its sole concern should be lessons learned for the future.GodIsADeeJay81 wrote: ↑Mon Dec 11, 2023 4:47 pmJust over 100 years since the last serious global pandemic
Yes scientists and government officials would have various scenarios built up and plans in place but ultimately until it happens, nothing was guaranteed to work
They made mistakes, anyone would in their position, but people were always going to die here in the uk (and other countries) because of modern travel methods etc which helped Covid get around quicker
Mistakes were made by those in charge of the country, the scientists advising them and those required to implement any processes and also by the populace itself
The Enquiry is all about getting all the information together to see what can be learned from it
Hopefully we won’t get another one for another hundred years but we never know and chances are mistakes will be made in the next one.
Just remember, you don’t vote for your local MP based on their experience in the real world, an absolute minority have had “normal” jobs and none of them are experts in the areas where it matters when it comes to a pandemic
No one was to blame?Colburn_Claret wrote: ↑Mon Dec 11, 2023 10:02 pmAgree totally that its sole concern should be lessons learned for the future.
Sadly it will also be used as a witch hunt, and a blame game.
Mistakes were made, with no data to fall back on that was inevitable, but this country...... Why is it always necessary to pick out the worst of mankind, and feed on it, to open wounds then let them fester. Whatever mistakes were made, no one was to blame.
I cant think of another country in the world that would carry out this sort of enquiry, yet the death rates were the same in practically every major nation, especially throughout Europe.
Who did the ignoring?
Who awarded the contract?Clovius Boofus wrote: ↑Mon Dec 11, 2023 9:11 pmDesperate enough to give Hancock's pub landlord a multimillion-pound contract. But like you say, nothing to see here .
I suspect the meaning behind "no-one was to blame" is not trying to say that no mistakes were made, but is trying to say that the primary reason why covid struck down so many people around the world was not because of politicians. Obviously doing things differently might have helped - Sweden being a rare outlier example of how things could have been done differently - and that's what the enquiry should be trying to find out. Whether doing things differently would have helped, and in what way differently.
I thought it was accepted now that had we locked down a week earlier, countless lives would have been saved?dsr wrote: ↑Mon Dec 11, 2023 10:16 pmI suspect the meaning behind "no-one was to blame" is not trying to say that no mistakes were made, but is trying to say that the primary reason why covid struck down so many people around the world was not because of politicians. Obviously doing things differently might have helped - Sweden being a rare outlier example of how things could have been done differently - and that's what the enquiry should be trying to find out. Whether doing things differently would have helped, and in what way differently.
But that process requires Johnson, Sunak et al to be honest about the decisions they made. Once they start lying they open themselves up to the ‘witch hunt’ as peopledsr wrote: ↑Mon Dec 11, 2023 10:16 pmI suspect the meaning behind "no-one was to blame" is not trying to say that no mistakes were made, but is trying to say that the primary reason why covid struck down so many people around the world was not because of politicians. Obviously doing things differently might have helped - Sweden being a rare outlier example of how things could have been done differently - and that's what the enquiry should be trying to find out. Whether doing things differently would have helped, and in what way differently.
The care home thing was a disasterfidelcastro wrote: ↑Mon Dec 11, 2023 10:19 pmI thought it was accepted now that had we locked down a week earlier, countless lives would have been saved?
I also thought it was common knowledge that moving vulnerable old people into care homes from hospital without testing was a huge mistake.
You just don't get it.fidelcastro wrote: ↑Mon Dec 11, 2023 10:19 pmI thought it was accepted now that had we locked down a week earlier, countless lives would have been saved?
I also thought it was common knowledge that moving vulnerable old people into care homes from hospital without testing was a huge mistake.
It was a tradegy for sure. There wasn't the testing capacity at that stage unfortunately. NHS trusts were instructed by government to discharge as many patients as possible. The alternative would have been even higher hospital acquired Covid infection. All unpalatable scenarios and why an inquiry is important.GodIsADeeJay81 wrote: ↑Mon Dec 11, 2023 10:27 pmThe care home thing was a disaster
The nhs just wasn’t doing its job properly there and were sending countless vulnerable and infected people into enclosed homes where un-infected and vulnerable people were living
It's certainly not common knowledge that locking down earlier would have saved lives, or indeed whether lockdown saved lives at all. That's what the enquiry is meant to find out, but I suspect that like you, they have made their mind up already.fidelcastro wrote: ↑Mon Dec 11, 2023 10:19 pmI thought it was accepted now that had we locked down a week earlier, countless lives would have been saved?
I also thought it was common knowledge that moving vulnerable old people into care homes from hospital without testing was a huge mistake.
I haven't time to go through every point there, but of course fewer people would have died if we'd locked down earlier. The delay meant the virus spread like wildfire.dsr wrote: ↑Mon Dec 11, 2023 10:38 pmIt's certainly not common knowledge that locking down earlier would have saved lives, or indeed whether lockdown saved lives at all. That's what the enquiry is meant to find out, but I suspect that like you, they have made their mind up already.
How many would have died if we had done it like Sweden? They had higher death tolls that their neighbours at first, but lower death tolls now. How many would have died if our government had pretended it was a bit like flu, like the fruitcake in Brazil? They didn't lock down at all, but Peru did and had twice the number of deaths. Was it right to lock down the schools? Was a lockdown that kept shops open, enough of a lockdown to make an actual difference - or should the shops have been shut? Did lockdown just delay the inevitable because most of us caught the disease anyway, eventually? Was it a mistake not to go for a third lockdown at Christmas 2021? Did banning funerals make an appreciable difference? Did lockdown delay the spread of the virus for long enough to get the vaccine working?
For that matter, does the vaccine make much difference or is it just that omicron variant is less lethal?
Are there procedures in place to get useful statistics if it happens again? Is anyone assessing the quality (which was abysmal) of the modelling used by the scientists? How could they have got more useful data earlier to prove (as we now know)( that children were neither vulnerable to the disease, nor likely spreaders of it? What are the procedures for next time to establish the economic and social costs of lockdown as well as the potential lifesaving costs? How can we assess the value of (say) the life of an old person against the education of a young one? Was it right to tell people to "protect the NHS" or did it resulted in large numbers of cancers and other illnesses being undiagnosed?
If we want to know the answer "did the politicians waffle and prevaricate and run round in circles and fail to make strong decisions", I think we already know that. We don't need a 5-year enquiry to assess whether Boris Johnson was fit to be PM. What we need is a proper assessment of what was done, and proper guidance as to what might be done next time. There are shedloads of more important questions to be asked.
(I agree the point about sending covid-patients into old folks' homes. Bad mistake. They should have had properly dedicated covid hospitals for people who couldn't safely be sent home.)
Aww, bless. I'm sure that will make lots of selfish people happy.fidelcastro wrote: ↑Mon Dec 11, 2023 9:57 pmHopefully it'll come out that making people wear masks in public was completely pointless.
Fewer people would have died initially. But what would the longer term costs have been? Would you continue to support industries that had no customers or would you let them fail? Would you extend furlough? Keep schools closed? How long for? Until the economy collapsed? Until we got a vaccine? Between April & June 2020, the UK economy lost about £200 billion.fidelcastro wrote: ↑Mon Dec 11, 2023 11:03 pmI haven't time to go through every point there, but of course fewer people would have died if we'd locked down earlier. The delay meant the virus spread like wildfire.
Boris didn't care and was dismissive of how dangerous it could be. He was more concerned about the damage to the economy... Until he caught the virus himself.
They weren't "points", they were questions.fidelcastro wrote: ↑Mon Dec 11, 2023 11:03 pmI haven't time to go through every point there, but of course fewer people would have died if we'd locked down earlier. The delay meant the virus spread like wildfire.
Boris didn't care and was dismissive of how dangerous it could be. He was more concerned about the damage to the economy... Until he caught the virus himself.
Contained being the important partLowbankclaret wrote: ↑Mon Dec 11, 2023 10:26 pmThink there have been a couple of SARs and Ebola outbreaks that have been contained. They would have been way worse that Covid.
One of the things that marked Covid-19 out from other potential outbreaks was the ease of transmission. It was passed on much more easily than either of those two, for example people showing no symptoms but carrying the virus could still be highly infectious. I think I’m right in saying this wasn’t the case with SARS which is a similar coronavirus.Lowbankclaret wrote: ↑Mon Dec 11, 2023 10:26 pmThink there have been a couple of SARs and Ebola outbreaks that have been contained. They would have been way worse that Covid.
This is the thing. If they’d exhausted all possibilities with existing suppliers and then turned to all these companies with no experience in PPE, who often had been set up days earlier and just happened to be linked to people in power then maybe there could be an argument.
I think any government incompetence and corruption, especially on such a huge scale, is worthy of scrutiny.Woodleyclaret wrote: ↑Tue Dec 12, 2023 3:42 amA total waste of money and massive hypocrisy on our governments part. We research and develop biological warfare in Wiltshire The virus was released by the lab in China to test its effectiveness but got out of control .We didn't need any blame game, finger pointing ,after the horse has bolted, enquiry
Okay then. The 'civil service worker' must have been looking through the Good Beer Guide for West Suffolk when they chose Matt Hancock's pub landlord to supply PPE. Now will that suffice for you, or do you still wish to continue with your usual insufferable pedantic quibbling?GodIsADeeJay81 wrote: ↑Mon Dec 11, 2023 10:15 pmWho awarded the contract?
The MP or the civil service worker?
You’ll find it wasn’t the MP
Awww what’s up?Clovius Boofus wrote: ↑Tue Dec 12, 2023 8:23 amOkay then. The 'civil service worker' must have been looking through the Good Beer Guide for West Suffolk when they chose Matt Hancock's pub landlord to supply PPE. Now will that suffice for you, or do you still wish to continue with your usual insufferable pedantic quibbling?
MPs and degrees:timshorts wrote: ↑Mon Dec 11, 2023 9:06 pmThen you'd get some pretty useless results.
Why would any half-decent lawyer want to waste their time with an arrangement like that? And who is to say or judge whether the result is "meaningful" or "useful". We generally end up with lawyers involved in these types of affairs that have proved their worth elsewhere. If you are talking of barristers, they would not get instructed if they were ****, so you might not like them, but these are (usually) good at their jobs (even if they are pompous sounding *****) . You can probably say similarly for those that provided the scientific advice (except the last bit).
Where the system fails is with the politicians. The route to becoming a politician is for the most part having an ability to brown nose. There is no aptitude test. No specialist exams to take. It helps if you look vaguely appealing, went to the right school and join a little club of two which is perpetuated by the fpp system. A few soundbites that appeal to the lcd masses will do you fine, and, of course, you don't even have to come up with those. Because of the nature of the beast, you are likely to find a disproportionate number who read artsy subjects, disproportionately few with science/maths leaning a-levels, let alone at higher education levels.
But, of course, an understanding of science is not key when trying to win an election. Sociology might be useful when tapping into brexiteers votes with a pretence that they are the ones that want to "stop the boats" - even though they didn't really bother too much about "the boats" until they needed to save their jobs, and thought that this was the best way to get a boost in the polls. It is crass. The only ones who didn't see this coming are those the policy is aimed at.
Phase 2:- use the failure to get the policy working as a means to blame everyone other than those in power and then call an election to get the country to back the Rwanda policy. It's as daft as the snp wanting to make the next election "a referendum on devolution".
Phase 3 - having achieved an election win/majority of Scottish votes, then claim that "the country voted for you" so that you now have a mandate to carry out any crackpot nonsense that was in your manifesto, no matter how ill thought out, whether it has been properly costed, how moral it might be. Etc.
The sooner that we can get rid of fpp, and get a little bit further towards a democratic system, the better. It's hard to agree with Nigel Farage on anything at all, but on that point at least, he is right. Strange, given that this is the system the EU use, and, of course, pretty much all of the western world in some form or other. Of course, the US is less democratic than we are, but look how that works out. I'd rather any of our current three leaders was in charge than trump or Biden.
Then there's those that only see what they WANT to see.
I really do not get this facination with Sweden. Why not compare with other Scandinavian countries - all of which did lock down and all of which had far lower per capita rates of COVID mortality than Sweden - e.g Norway = 242 deaths per million population, Denmark = 558 deaths per million, Finland = 310 deaths per million, Sweden = 1406 deaths per million ....dsr wrote: ↑Mon Dec 11, 2023 10:38 pmIt's certainly not common knowledge that locking down earlier would have saved lives, or indeed whether lockdown saved lives at all. That's what the enquiry is meant to find out, but I suspect that like you, they have made their mind up already.
How many would have died if we had done it like Sweden? They had higher death tolls that their neighbours at first, but lower death tolls now. How many would have died if our government had pretended it was a bit like flu, like the fruitcake in Brazil? They didn't lock down at all, but Peru did and had twice the number of deaths. Was it right to lock down the schools? Was a lockdown that kept shops open, enough of a lockdown to make an actual difference - or should the shops have been shut? Did lockdown just delay the inevitable because most of us caught the disease anyway, eventually? Was it a mistake not to go for a third lockdown at Christmas 2021? Did banning funerals make an appreciable difference? Did lockdown delay the spread of the virus for long enough to get the vaccine working?
For that matter, does the vaccine make much difference or is it just that omicron variant is less lethal?
Are there procedures in place to get useful statistics if it happens again? Is anyone assessing the quality (which was abysmal) of the modelling used by the scientists? How could they have got more useful data earlier to prove (as we now know)( that children were neither vulnerable to the disease, nor likely spreaders of it? What are the procedures for next time to establish the economic and social costs of lockdown as well as the potential lifesaving costs? How can we assess the value of (say) the life of an old person against the education of a young one? Was it right to tell people to "protect the NHS" or did it resulted in large numbers of cancers and other illnesses being undiagnosed?
If we want to know the answer "did the politicians waffle and prevaricate and run round in circles and fail to make strong decisions", I think we already know that. We don't need a 5-year enquiry to assess whether Boris Johnson was fit to be PM. What we need is a proper assessment of what was done, and proper guidance as to what might be done next time. There are shedloads of more important questions to be asked.
(I agree the point about sending covid-patients into old folks' homes. Bad mistake. They should have had properly dedicated covid hospitals for people who couldn't safely be sent home.)
The fascination with Sweden is that their excess mortality over the three years 2020-22, so I am told, is third lowest in Europe. The suggestion has been made that doing it their way has lead to fewer long term problems, both economically and medically, than doing it with strict lockdown. I would like to see this suggestion tested. (I understand a fair chunk of Sweden's excess mortality during covid was because they made the same mistake we did about sending covid-infected people into old folks' homes. I don't know whether Denmark, Noway, Finland made the same mistake, though.)MalaysiaMo wrote: ↑Tue Dec 12, 2023 10:00 amI really do not get this facination with Sweden. Why not compare with other Scandinavian countries - all of which did lock down and all of which had far lower per capita rates of COVID mortality than Sweden - e.g Norway = 242 deaths per million population, Denmark = 558 deaths per million, Finland = 310 deaths per million, Sweden = 1406 deaths per million ....
Compare UK's COVID mortality rate - 2636 deaths per million - with the OECD average of 1634 deaths per million, and something was clearly amiss in the UK's response to COVID. Why was our rate so much higher than that of France (1836 deaths per million) and Germany (1342 deaths per million)? It was even higher than Italy's (2319 deaths per million) , despite the UK having about 2 weeks of additional time to prepare ....
At the same time, the UK's economy was hit harder than many OECD countries. Compare with Ireland - 1186 deaths per million and 20% increase in GDP since COVID.
That question "why?" is surely what the current enquiry is about - or should be. It has to be partly due to incompetence and prolonged underfunding of essential services.